Some pages of Jacopo Bellini's sketchbooks are now viewable online though the books themselves are in the British Library in London and the Louvre in Paris.
We don't know the exact dates of the drawings in the sketchbooks, and they may range over many years, from 1424 to 1460. What having the notebooks online enables scholars to do is to leaf through Jacopo's drawings without damaging any of the pencil sketches. In going through Jacopo's books in this way, I came across this drawing of a man in profile from the Louvre sketchbook:
Isn't this description exactly a description of self-portraits by Andrea Mantegna himself? In one of the last blog entries on Mantegna, I showed in succession the self-portraits that Mantegna promotes in various art works, including in the Presentation in the Temple in Berlin.
between nose and mouth, and a long nose with a slight bulb at the end.
Are these two young men not the same person? Just head turned slightly to the right of profile (from the viewer's perspective) in the Presentation panel?
If they are Andrea Mantegna, both of them, one wonders why his portrait is in
Jacopo Bellini's sketchbooks. Did Jacopo Bellini do the drawing in order to show his daughter the man he had in mind for her to marry? Since Jacopo met Mantegna while he and Giovanni Bellini were working in Padua, could he have made the drawing to take to Venice for her? Does he sketch the image to persuade Nicolosia to give her dowry to this talented painter? Andrea Mantegna does marry Nicolosia in 1453, and he becomes the son-in-law of Jacopo Bellini, and although he does not join Jacopo's workshop in Venice, he does give Jacopo grandchildren, one of whom is probably painted into the Presentation panel as baby Jesus as we have seen.
And if we compare this drawing in profile with the other self-portraits of Mantegna that we've looked at, the similarity is striking:
Long nose with small bulb at end, crevice between nose and mouth, bags under eyes, no cleft chin, medium-thick lips, all the characteristics of the one are in the others, albeit at different ages of the person:
Since he is so young in the drawing, it is probably a portrait of Mantegna at age 22, in 1453, the year in which he married Nicolosia.
But it is hard for me to believe that the artist who sketched the other images of Biblical subjects in Jacopo's sketchbooks was the artist who made this drawing. Jacopo Bellini was interested in narrative, and how to produce Biblical narrative on a large scale, using one-point perspective and architecture. Here are two typical examples of the drawings in his notebooks:
People in his drawings are there, but they are always relegated to the back or
sides of the stage; he is rarely moved to draw them up close or to show us
distinct features that would allow us to identify them. He is interested in
the bigger picture, not what makes up the faces of the protagonists in his drama.
Portraiture, on the other hand, seems to have been a specialty of Giovanni Bellini,
Jacopo's half-brother, as we can see from the numerous
portraits that he produces in his career. In these
the person is shown three-quarter view usually, half-length, and with a sky
or landscape behind them. The face and its features block out the rest of the
picture plane and we, as spectators, feel near the sitters in each case, as though we know
them well enough to have a conversation with them.
sides of the stage; he is rarely moved to draw them up close or to show us
distinct features that would allow us to identify them. He is interested in
the bigger picture, not what makes up the faces of the protagonists in his drama.
Portraiture, on the other hand, seems to have been a specialty of Giovanni Bellini,
portraits that he produces in his career. In these
the person is shown three-quarter view usually, half-length, and with a sky
or landscape behind them. The face and its features block out the rest of the
picture plane and we, as spectators, feel near the sitters in each case, as though we know
them well enough to have a conversation with them.
Would it not have been more in keeping with his interests for Giovanni Bellini to sketch this profile drawing portrait of Mantegna to show to his niece, Nicolosia? Did Jacopo, knowing his half-brother, Giovanni, was better at doing portraiture than he was, let him use his sketching notebook in Padua to record the face and hair of this young man that Jacopo wanted to have his daughter marry?
If we let this drawing be by Giovanni rather than Jacopo, for me it calls into question the identity of the person who drew the Lamentation in Jacopo's Louvre notebook, too.
This sketch of Christ's body being lowered into the tomb sets the scene in a landscape, but we witness the event perhaps two yards from the figures, close enough to feel in the faces of the people who loved Jesus the sheer emptiness they experience at his death.
While Jacopo keeps his participants at a distance in other drawings in the sketchbooks, Giovanni in this drawing brings the participants parallel to the picture plane because he wants us to share along with them the horror of the moment and event.
As we have shown in the blog entry on the Presentation panels, Giovanni likes to zoom in on the people in the event and bring them close to the surface of the painting and the viewer to reveal their emotions in the middle of a crisis. And since he later paints several Lamentations from various angles, isn't he sketching out his thoughts about
how to represent this subject in the drawing of Jacopo's sketchbook?This image below looks like a drawing but is
actually a tempera painting on panel by Giovanni that is in the Uffizi in Florence. In all of the Pieta or Lamentation paintings by Giovanni,the figures are depicted from waist up so that we can peer into their faces to empathize with their lot.
I think Jacopo's sketchbooks have mostly drawings by Jacopo, but, I think, in two instances at least, that Giovanni Bellini drew a portrait and a Lamentation scene onto the pages.
The portrait of Mantegna in the Louvre sketchbook, then, for me, is by Giovanni Bellini and not Jacopo, and is an early portrait of Giovanni's young niece's husband-to-be and Giovanni's own rival in art and family life. In some ways his portrait is more flattering to Mantegna than Mantegna's self-portrait. Mantegna sees himself as aging, worried, neurotic, and tense. In Giovanni's hands Mantegna is handsome, serious, young, vital, and stylish.
In the Louvre drawing we learn as much about Giovanni Bellini and his treatment of others as we do about Mantegna.
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